The studio’s inauspicious start

Rain. We hadn’t counted on that. This was to be the day the studio started being built.   But a constant drizzle has dampened the mood. (And mine when we finally did some calculations on how much wood is involved!)

But still. Here are Dario and his son Sandro measuring up.   I get a studio measuring six metres long by three and a half metres wide. With decking around the edges for my cold frames. They will be built later.

The first task is to dig the six holes for the cement feet for the structure.   And being on a slope and the edge of a mountain, the north side of the building has to have a cement wall. Just a teensy one. But I would say that; I don’ t have to get in a dig a trench forty centimetres wide, forty deep and six metres twenty long.

That’s the fun task for Sandro and Nicolas if they ever come back from lunch.   This drizzle doesn’t give anyone a great gusto for toil.

I have done a few things already – despite the weather – sorted out and tied up the little wisteria that grows on the south side of the main house. It’s going to stay small and we only use it as a scented plant in spring to bring a smile to whoever is doing the washing up in the room directly above.

Nicolas had done his radical pruning of all the roses. I can’t watch. It’s too brutal a sight for me. But I’ll happily pick up all the cuttings and see if I can get some to take. More Gertrude Jekylls are not a bad thing.

And later I will go back to the potager and finish cutting the nettles and brambles out of the wall. And maybe pot up yet more strawberry runners. We shall see. I have tied in the little fig tree against the wall above the strawberries, so that’s a start.   I also want to transplant some of the eragrostis curvulas into the bank above the pool.   But the soil might be a bit too soft for that.